Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] This one thing can actually unlock the opportunities to have amazing relationships in your life. Tune in. I'll tell you a little bit about it.
[00:00:31] Hey, welcome to shifts and ladders. It's Ryan Robinson. Excited and delighted that you've been able to join with us today. I want to talk about relationships. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk about relationships. There's all kinds of them. There is friendships that you've had, there's significant others. There's co workers. There's all kinds of relationships, every shape and form, every level of relationships. Whether you have a networking relationship or relationships you've had for 2030 plus years, there's a bunch of relationships. In fact, if you are, if you live long enough, you're going to see the impact of strong relationships. And unfortunately, relationships cause us some of the most, and I'll say most of our pain, actually, our deepest pain usually comes from a relationship that has gone wrong. Whether they said something, whether they avoided you, whether they ghosted you, whether they just keep it in a buck, cheated on you.
[00:01:46] There's all kinds of reasons as to why relationships go or go wrong, but there's also many reasons why relationships go right. And I want to kind of talk about this main thing, because a lot of the attributes that we forget about in relationships are, you know, what we need to get back to. So I'm going to talk about a couple things. First. One, there's this quote here that says this. The beauty in love is lies not in finding someone exactly like us, but in discovering the harmony between our authentic selves and theirs. Okay, so what does that mean?
[00:02:32] You have to be your most authentic self. That is the one and the only thing you need to do when you get into a relationship, whether, like I said, friends, coworkers, intimate relationship, or significant other relationship, whatever the case is, you need to show up authentically. Why is that so important?
[00:02:59] It's important because you will get found out no matter what you're doing, especially if you're not honest. The only person, and actually the first person you need to be authentic with is you.
[00:03:16] I'm gonna say that again. The first person you need to be authentic and transparent with is you. Why? Because if you don't know you, there's no way you're gonna get to know somebody else. William Shakespeare says this. He says, to thine own self. Self. That's old English. To thine own self be true. What does that mean? Know you, know what you like, what you don't like, what you enjoy, what you don't enjoy, what in what passion you have, for what kind of work you like to do.
[00:03:50] Do you like pizza? Do you like Chinese? Do you like what? What is it about you that you know about yourself? Because what that shows and what that displays is if I can see that this individual has done the work to not only know themselves, know what they like, know what boundaries they can put up, what they're not going to take, what they're going to manage, that shows a level of discipline, willingness to see the good, the bad and the ugly in themselves.
[00:04:27] And if I can trust that they see all of that stuff in themselves, best believe they'll give me some grace to see it in me. But unfortunately, some of us like to tell it like we like to see it, aka lie to ourselves.
[00:04:46] I'm telling you this because I've had challenges with this for a long time.
[00:04:52] I had a real struggle about being transparent.
[00:04:57] I'm one of those folks that doesn't, let me take this, but let me say this. I used to be one of those people that didn't want to get something wrong. I struggle with this, but no one wants to be wrong. Right, but the or say that something hurt them, that they're injured and that they need help. Okay? These are typically moments in people's lives where they're the weakest.
[00:05:30] And it said that we connect to one another through our weaknesses, not through our strengths.
[00:05:39] Your strengths are not mine, but at least the weaknesses are.
[00:05:45] If you've been hurt, if you've been lied to, those are some common human experiences.
[00:05:53] But most of the time, and I'm just speaking for us men, folk, the gender, the male gender, we like to hide that kind of stuff because we hate to acknowledge that something can actually hurt us.
[00:06:11] And I would argue that if you don't acknowledge that you've been hurt, that you've been, uh. That you're angry, that you're upset, you will bottle it up, and eventually you get shaken enough times, you will explode like a can or bottle of Coca Cola soda pop.
[00:06:38] It'll happen simply because we just weren't real with ourselves. Sometimes y'all being real with you is ugly, and no one likes to acknowledge what they see is ugly.
[00:06:54] Okay? You might have an attitude.
[00:06:58] If someone says you got an attitude and you're like, I don't have an attitude, then now you're like, I just saw you had an attitude. I can't even be honest with you because you're not honest with yourself.
[00:07:09] So best believe I'm not going to sit here and have an argument with how someone is behaving because they don't want to acknowledge their own mess.
[00:07:21] You can miss me with that person. Exactly. I don't really need to deal with someone who does not acknowledge that they're wrong.
[00:07:29] That is why taking the time to know who you are authentically is the number one most foundational thing to any area of cultivation that you're trying to shift into your life. If you're trying to shift spiritually, if you're trying to shift your mind mentally and emotionally, relationally or physically, the way you relate to the world around you says a lot about how you tend to go further in your life. Because the way I see you, especially engaging in commentary about how you feel about yourself, you can say, well, I'm fat, or you. We tell on ourselves all day long about how we feel about ourselves. And sometimes that stuff just ain't attractive.
[00:08:26] I mean, I am happily married.
[00:08:30] It ain't always been easy.
[00:08:32] But I will tell you, the more that I started to become okay with my authentic self, the more my relationship and marriage with my wife has gotten much, much better.
[00:08:49] For some reason, culture tells us that we as men, I'm just going to speak to myself as a man. There's an expected way on how to approach things these days. Sometimes it's called toxic masculinity because there is this perceived way that men should be controlling situations and circumstances.
[00:09:10] I would argue that females have toxic femininity at this point.
[00:09:15] That's a whole nother podcast. But. But I will say this, though, because culture has a way of projecting what is, quote unquote socially acceptable through media, through the music that we listen to, to the movies that we watch. We basically take on what we think is expected of us, and then we negate and we put off to the side what's truly and authentically us.
[00:09:49] Then you find yourselves 1020 years later realizing that what you adopted when you were in your mid twenties isn't something you even like to do in the first place.
[00:10:02] I'm gonna give you an example and I.
[00:10:05] I'll give you some vulnerability, transparency, okay?
[00:10:09] You know, like, you can respond back, but if you can just hit the like button. Okay.
[00:10:17] I am not your typical athlete person, okay?
[00:10:21] I used to be a person who played video games all the time. I love video games. I ain't got time now. I got kids, I got ministry, I got business. I got stuff. So I can't. I don't have time. But I used to play video games a lot.
[00:10:38] I also tinker with computers, even to this day. I love gadgets. Okay, I. Now we're gonna get into some of the stuff that, you know, is considered quote unquote nerdy. But I grew up also since maybe the second, 1st or second grade, actually, with a massive comic book collection, y'all. I love comic books.
[00:11:09] I love them. I literally, some of my favorite superheroes. Batman, Spider Man, Superman.
[00:11:18] Justice League of America was one of my. Is my favorite, like, superhero group. DC Comics. Not Marvel X Men. That's Marvel all. I mean, I literally would go to a comic book store, y'all, and be like, if you ever watch the big Bang theory, we might need to put a link in the link in the show notes or something like that. But I would be one of those that would go to the comic book store and get comic books every Friday or every other Friday with one of my classmates, and we would get the long box with the cardboard. Like, I'm that. I am that guy.
[00:12:03] Then I watched anime Dragon Ball Z, if you know anything. Yu yu hagasho inuyasha, Gundam Wing.
[00:12:16] Gosh, what else is there?
[00:12:20] Yeah, them shows, those shows. Those are things I enjoy. I played music. I was a drummer. I played drums. I love music.
[00:12:32] Love it.
[00:12:34] And you guys, this is all of me.
[00:12:39] But for some time in my life, I knit. I avoided the comic book guy until Marvel started getting really big. By the way, Marvel, shout out to Marvel and the Dark Knight.
[00:12:53] They made comic books mainstream.
[00:12:57] But I did not like sharing that with people.
[00:13:03] That was my jam.
[00:13:06] That dragon Ball Z was my jam.
[00:13:10] So in order to be authentic, you need to be transparent.
[00:13:15] And a lot of us avoid being transparent because we don't know how we are going to be received by people. So we end up hiding ourselves as Adam and Eve did in Genesis chapter three, after they ate of the tree of knowledge and good and evil and sewed up fig leaves because they saw their nakedness and was ashamed of it.
[00:13:39] The reason, I'll say another reason why we don't get into relationships or have strong relationships is because we're ashamed of what we enjoy.
[00:13:52] Like, how can somebody accept a guy who, who loves comic books, plays football, loves music, and likes video games, too?
[00:14:07] These things don't quote unquote fit.
[00:14:11] But who told you that the things that you enjoy don't quote unquote fit?
[00:14:21] That is just exactly what God said to Adam and Eve. I keep going back to this book. In Genesis chapter three, he says, I think it's chapter four.
[00:14:32] The Lord was walking in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day. And he's looking for Adam, said, where are you?
[00:14:39] And he said, I covered up myself because I was naked. He said, who told you you were naked?
[00:14:47] Who told you that you couldn't like all of those things?
[00:14:55] Who said you couldn't be yourself?
[00:14:59] The first mention of relationship in the Bible is in Genesis, chapter two. Okay? When God made Eve from Adam's rib, the Bible says that they were naked and not ashamed. That's the first foundation of relationship. Naked and unashamed. Okay. Which means there was a level of transparency, because I had to, I did not cover up.
[00:15:26] And I'm not mad at, I'm not hiding it. I'm not ashamed of it.
[00:15:33] So soon as we become conscious of our, quote, unquote, um, uncertainess or lack thereof, of common, uh, social, social, accepted behavior, we start saying, like, I don't fit. And then it starts to affect every relationship going forward because we don't believe that we can show up as our true selves because we won't be accepted.
[00:16:04] And in fact, once they find out that you've been hiding parts of you, you won't be accepted then because they don't know who you are.
[00:16:13] Because you were not willing to be transparent.
[00:16:17] You weren't willing to be authentic and risk the relationship.
[00:16:23] You can't get mad at someone that shows you all your, all their cards.
[00:16:28] But I can really get mad at someone who hides them, though.
[00:16:32] Mm hmm.
[00:16:34] Shout out to anybody who was, who hid cards during spades.
[00:16:42] But I digress, though.
[00:16:44] But I really think, though, whenever we're doing relationships and we're dealing with it, you got to show up as you.
[00:16:51] You got to show up as you and be okay with you. If you don't do any of that work.
[00:16:58] Anything that you do after this is not going to last long.
[00:17:05] It's not even going to last at all.
[00:17:08] Even God himself wants us to be our authentic self. And the thing is, he knows the beginning from the end. He is the alpha and the omega.
[00:17:22] He knows your heart.
[00:17:26] So there's nothing like you can't really hide from him.
[00:17:30] We try to.
[00:17:33] So what he's really waiting for you to do is to be honest with yourself, because he sees how he sees you.
[00:17:40] He's just waiting for you to see you so that he can actually work on you and in you.
[00:17:46] Oh, got my stank face.
[00:17:51] So important.
[00:17:53] It's so important.
[00:17:55] The gift of your authenticity is what is the catalyst and actually the basis for any kind of relationship. You've got to do it.
[00:18:10] You've got to do it. For yourself, but if you don't do it, you're going to have to keep up with all the characters you made up.
[00:18:22] All right, cool. So we're going to start with this, but we're going to continue on the different kinds of relationships and actually this process of what it looks like to make these kinds of shifts. But this is the first one you got. In order to get out of the park and go into first gear, you're going to need to find out who you are, who you are authentically, and then own it. And then we can start moving into the other gears. But if you love this, share this with someone, especially someone that you know is struggling relationally. It doesn't have to be romantic relationships, but it does have to be relationship. You're going to be interacting with somebody at some point, share this podcast with them, like, and subscribe. We're really gonna go down this, down these, these. This topic of relationships. I I wasn't sure if I was gonna do it because relationships are a touchy subject, but I'm like, let's just go for it because I really believe that we are as strong as the relationships that we have.
[00:19:30] And when we have shifts like that in relationships, it actually keeps us held back for a while, especially if we don't have any solid ones. So, anyway, keep it locked here and we will catch you in the next pie. Peace. Bye.
